Knicks’ D’Antoni Needs Box & One

Watching last night’s all-too-familiar 4th quarter Knick demise, a recurring theme was on full display.

Somewhere along the way between guaranteed multi-million dollar contracts and suspect coaching, the art of boxing out has been completely lost. At least it for these seventh-seeded Knicks it has.

Case-in-point: With the Knicks and Pistons tied at 95 points apiece with just under two minutes to go, Detroit’s Will Bynum missed a layup attempt that should have been rebounded by any of the three New York defenders in the general vicinity.

The only problem was that those Knicks — most notably Amar’e Stoudemire — were busy watching Bynum’s shot fly through the air instead of putting a body on an opposing player.

Of course, it was no surprise when former Knick Chris Wilcox emphatically slammed home what would prove to be the game-winning bucket. Making matters worse, on the very next Detroit possession, Wilcox was again left alone, this time keeping a missed shot alive by tipping the ball to teammate Tayshaun Prince.

Knicks lose.

Maybe coach Mike D’Antoni should scrap the two-hour defensive-minded practices and instead institute some box-out drills. He might even want to bring in Charles Oakley, who knows a thing or two about rebounding.

Who knows, with some better rebounding — and a bit of luck — perhaps the Knicks can pull off a Round-One upset. And give D’Antoni some much needed job security.

Jamie O'Grady is a credentialed media member who joined The Journal News and LoHud.com as a freelancer in March of 2011. He's worked as a contributing writer for MLB.com, and he's also a practicing securities lawyer in his spare time.

1 Comment

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As regards rebounding, I do a “Freak stat,” that is, I divide defensive rebounds by missed shots from the floor. Doing this for Jeffries and Turiaf raises the question as to why Jeffries is getting what used to be Turiaf’s playing time? Turiaf, this year, has recorded 934 defensive rebounds while missing 641 shots from the floor, which comes to 934/641 = a ratio of 1.46. Jeffries has recorded 35 defensive rebounds and missed 43 shots, a ratio of 0.81-1. On top of this Jeffries cannot score, or at least, so far is being bypassed in the Knicks offensive scheme.

So why the change? The coach, in making this change, has rendered the Knicks as having the most predictable offense in the NBA, and much weaker, overall, on defense. Nice going.

By the way I use defensive rebounds and not offensive rebounds because in the NBA, so far this year, defensive rebounds have a regression value of 1.39 points per DR; Whereas offensive rebounds show a regression value of 0.28. Therefore, to combine these two categories as though the two components have equal value is a mistake.